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It’s the longest trip of the season for Hereford FC on Tuesday as they travel up to full-time South Shields, a 550ish-mile round trip, after the intended early-January Saturday slot for this game was postponed.
The switch to a Tuesday is of course far from ideal, but it’s one of those where the sheer adversity of it could bring out a really good performance, and achieving back-to-back seasonal doubles over Brackley and then South Shields would boost confidence nicely.
The Mariners have not been having an easy time of things lately, winning just one of their last six games. That run sees them sitting in 14th position, seven points behind a Bulls side starting to rebuild after a poor January. That league position looks like underachievement given the funding that affords Shields their full-time status. On Saturday they rescued a point at home to Scarborough with a late equaliser.
Paul Blackett ended up as the division’s top scorer with 30 goals last season. He’s got 15 already in 2024/25 in just 22 games, and is therefore on course for another 30-goal season. Some achievement. I did briefly get quite excited at seeing that he’d recently picked up a fifth yellow card for the season at Scunthorpe, but because they’ve been accumulated over the course of the whole season rather than in a concentrated amount of time a suspension doesn’t apply. Or something. There’s still the possibility that he’ll have a headache I suppose, and have to miss this.
The tactics last season home and away against the Mariners involved sitting back and allowing them as much possession as they wanted in front of banks of defensively-minded but hard-pressing Bulls. That worked well in a 0-0 draw up there but not so well at home, when Shields outplayed the hosts and eased to a 3-0 win. Contrastingly, the Bulls were bolder in the opening game of this season, running out 3-0 winners, with Tate Campbell providing arguably the assist of the season for Yusifu Ceesay to sweep home the third goal.
Given that the onus will be on the hosts to make the running here, it could be that a surrendering of possession and a focus on counterattacking could be the Caddis approach tactically.
In their last two home games, Shields lost 1-0 to Darlington and drew 1-1 with Scarborough, with both of those sides reportedly ‘disciplined and organised’ and set up to counterattack. It was an approach that the home side failed to conquer, and is something Hereford should look to emulate.
Saturday’s second half against Brackley demonstrated that a little more direct forward momentum rather than playing sideways in front of the opposition can bring rewards. That approach is certainly something that returning loanee Levi Andoh brings to the table, and he may get a start here.
The return of both Matt Preston and Aaron Skinner at the weekend gave a lift all round, although with Andoh arriving and Skinner back, suddenly seemingly half the squad is comprised of right backs. As such, Sammy Robinson’s return to defensive midfield duties now seems inevitable, and this looks like the perfect match for that tactical switch.
A third win on the bounce wouldn’t be enough to see the Bulls return to the play-off places as Buxton and Chorley, the teams immediately above, happen to be playing each other on Tuesday. Unless they can somehow contrive to both lose that game, Hereford will have to be content with a win getting them right back into contention. That said, ten days ago fans would have not so much taken that scenario as been amazed by its possibility.
Once again, there was some warmly welcomed honesty from Paul Caddis over the weekend regarding how the phoenix club’s immediate future might play out, with an indication that the club isn’t ready to go full-time.
Caddis suggested that fans may not want to hear some home truths. I think probably the opposite is true. Fans want honesty, transparency and integrity, with comms channels open both ways. In fact they want the sort of honesty, transparency and integrity that Caddis and Chris Ammonds have introduced.
Something that stood out is the suggestion that having £5k in the bank is a barrier to advancement. It’s telling that on Planet Football being £5k in the black is a barrier whereas being £5m in the red with one person writing that debt off each season as part of some narcissistic impossible dream is somehow deemed OK.
It’s clear that all avenues are being considered creatively to push on to the next level, and that’s reassuring. Recourse solely to the chequebook is no guarantee to success, with Brackley being the perfect club to ask about that, and South Shields perhaps not too far behind. OK that was a last gasp effort to bring things back to having some relevance to Tuesday’s game – hope it was seamless. It wasn’t, was it? Just need to win; maybe I’ll simply say that here every week.
COYW